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by JazzRaft



Series: Dark at Night [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mild Depictions Of War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 20:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10343769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: Nyx returns from a hard-fought fight with a new perspective on his feelings towards Noctis. The prince is there to affirm every one.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/157212485127/if-youre-still-taking-older-prompts-then-its) for #34 in [this prompt post.](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/156180067603/send-me-two-characters-or-more-and-a-prompt-and)

Three weeks.

Three bloody, miserable, endless weeks spent crawling through mud, and gore, and scourge. Three weeks that quickly felt like three years when the food rations ran out and half his battalion was mowed down by MTs.

Nyx had followed better campaigns against the Nifs. He never thought there would come a day where he would compare the trauma of individual battles, as if there were a scale that could measure the weight of war. When the nights dragged on for so long, huddled into a trench to hide from the cold winds, there was little else to do and more than enough cynicism to start scoring fights and de-valuing the losses in them.

When reinforcements finally arrived to relieve them, and it was just the three of them in the back of the truck on the way home to Insomnia, Crowe crowded him and Libertus into her arms, and they all cried for the entire ride.

None of them wanted to hear the casualty report from Commander Drautos during their debriefing, and none of them wanted to receive accommodations from the King for their “valor in battle.” Numbed by the number of the dead, it was easier not to feel how heavy the rewarding speech from Regis was as they stood in a stiff line at the center of his throne room.

“Drinks?” Nyx asked them out in the corridor afterwards. “My treat?”

Crowe looked like she was going to object, but the tiny, half-moon smile on Libertus’s face at the idea made her reconsider. She nodded her consent, and tried mimicking the smile herself. It was going to take a lot of re-learning for all three of them.

As they were about to leave, a voice called to Nyx from further down the corridor. “Ny-err, I mean… Sir Ulric. A moment?”

Noctis hovered midway down the hallway, head bent to avoid the looks of Nyx’s companions. The shy evasion was an endearing sight. It softened some of the roughness in Nyx from his time away.

“I’ll meet you guys there,” he told his friends.

“Three weeks fighting their war, and the royals can’t give you one day off?” Libertus mumbled, walking away before either of them could admonish him.

Crowe glanced between Nyx and Noctis before she followed him, a sharp wakefulness to her tired eyes and a question in them that Nyx couldn’t answer in the brief moment before they were gone. He waited until they were well down the hall before retreating to Noctis, assuming the appropriate Kingsglaive position as he approached.

“You summoned me, Your Highness?”

“I didn’t realize you were back.”

Nyx looked down at himself and shrugged. “Well, I am.”

Noctis nodded, head bobbing absently well after he probably should have stopped. He stared up at Nyx, a hundred questions twitching in his eyes beneath that dark swathe of hair. There was a considerable restraint to his movements, too. He kept tilting forward on the balls of his feet and then abruptly tilting back. His fingers flexed at his sides, as if it was taking all of his effort to keep them there.

Nyx was grateful that he had a stance he could fall back on, because it allowed him to hide the similar indecisiveness of his own hands behind his back. He hadn’t expected to be gone for as long as he did. It had forced him to leave a lot of things unsaid. His survival throughout the ordeal had also forced him to rethink a lot of other things.

He hadn’t been sure if this flirtation of theirs was going anywhere greater than some flattering words and a single date before he left. He hadn’t been sure if he really wanted it to go anywhere more. The trenches had left him with nothing but the smell of death and his thoughts, and more often than not, those thoughts had been filled with the memory of Noctis’s smile. It had surprised him the first time it happened. And it surprised him even more when the mental imprint of it managed to quiet some of the gunfire still ringing in his skull.

Memory and fantasy started bleeding together once the food ran out. He couldn’t remember if he had ever kissed Noctis, or if he just dreamed that he did. He couldn’t remember if he actually knew the taste of his mouth, or if he was just imagining what it might be like. When the Lucian airships had come and Insomnia closed safely around him again, he remembered so many of the things he hadn’t gotten to do with Noctis yet. And he remembered thinking, as he watched the buildings go by from the flap in the back of the truck, that he wanted to do them all.

“I’m… um…” Noctis stammered, stuffing his twitchy hands into his pockets. “I’m glad you’re back. It’s not like I missed you or anything. I-It’s just, um, you’re a good… guy? And I, uh… didn’t like thinking that you might not come home so… Thanks. For not dying.”

He mouthed a curse to himself, a crimson blush creeping up his neck as he screwed his shoulders to his ears and avoided meeting Nyx’s gaze. The prince’s flustered state only served to make Nyx smile, warmth cutting through the weeks’ coldness that was left in his chest. It almost made all of the fighting worth it.

“Dinner. My place. Tomorrow.”

If he’d learned anything from the battlefield, it had been not to keep squandering his time. It had been cold days of close calls, and colder nights regretting all the things he hadn’t done before them.

Noctis looked up at him, blinking in surprise. When he recovered, a wide smile broke out across his face before he remembered that he was trying to maintain an iota of composure. He coughed and cleared his throat, putting the back of his hand to his lips to cover it. Nyx was content to watch him, grinning idly while he pulled himself together.

“Uh, sure! Sounds great! I’ll, um, catch you up to speed on everything you’ve missed since you’ve been gone.”

“Yeah. I’m counting on you, Highness.”

Noctis stood there for a moment, uncertainty evident in the pinkness of his cheeks and the shifting of his eyes. He glanced down one end of the hall to the next, then glanced back at Nyx. In a single, lightning-quick movement, he stepped up to the glaive, smacked a kiss on his cheek, muttered “see you then,” and vanished in a swirl of warping blue mist.

Nyx stared at the prince-shaped phantom he left behind. Felt the fading heat his lips had left behind and already wanting more. Already letting the horrors of the battlefield slip back into the furthest corners of his mind.

Yeah.

It was good to be home.


End file.
